Sick of the Same Old Christmas Tales? Want Something Funny and Maybe With Zombies?

Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming tale of Christmas Terror, Christopher MooreThe Stupidest Angel does for traditional rehashed Christmas themed books what Gremlins, Die Hard or National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation did for Christmas movies. In fact I won’t be surprised if this becomes a movie as well. This book (GCCC Libraries has both written and audio versions in our collection) has everything you need to be in a good festive mood no matter how annoying those relatives are becoming.

Moore returns to Pine Cove California for the third time. Some of the town’s eccentric characters inside we’ve met before in his first book Practical Demonkeeping, a few more were in The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, throw in the stupidest angel Raziel from Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal and Tucker and Roberto (a talking fruit bat) from Island of the Sequined Love Nun and you’ve got one big Christopher Moore character Christmas party. Even though it’s not a bad idea to have read those other novels first to fully appreciate these characters, nothing major from those storylines is revealed in this book so you can read this first if you’re just after a great Christmas read over the long weekend.

In the Stupidest Angel Raziel is sent to earth to seek a small child and grant him a wish that can only be fulfilled by divine intervention. Now those of us who read his encounters with Biff know he is not the brightest of angels and he will demonstrate this numerous times throughout this novel as he is mistaken for a paedophile, terminator style robot, peeping tom and all kind of things by the residents of Pine Cove. Meanwhile Joshua witnesses what he believes to be the murder of Santa Claus (it’s not really kids it’s just a drunk dressed as Santa) by a madwoman with a shovel and is praying for divine intervention as he’s been a good boy all year and he doesn’t want to have done that for nothing. Those of you who thought the townsfolk of Pine Cove had no brains will have a very hungry mob brought about through a miracle by the hand of Raziel disprove that for you. One of Moore’s funniest novels. Imagine if Carl Hiaasen and Bill Fitzhugh wrote horror/supernatural themed novels and you’ve got Christopher Moore!

Other unique Christmas reads worth checking out are Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp which is the crashing Christmas party novel Die Hard was based on, but it’s got a fair few differences to the Bruce Willis flick. Gremlins by George Gipe which is an adult horror novel very different to the Spielberg kids film. Neither of those are in our collection but an interesting book called the Spy Who Came for Christmas is, and although a predictable spy part story, what makes this special is the main character while taking refuge in a house tells a boy who lives there the events around the biblical tale of Jesus’ birth through the way a spy would tell the tale.

And if you want something different to the usual children’s Christmas picture books Santa Trap in our collection is it.

Santa Trap, Jonathan Emmett

Bradley Bartleby has been a bad child since birth and with deadbeat parents he’s gotten worse as he’s gotten older. His rich parents have given him whatever he wants, in fact they’ve become terrified of him. But there is one man who isn’t intimidated by Bradley. That man is Santa Claus. Ever single Christmas Santa doesn’t give Bradley a thing from his wish list, instead he gives him a pair of socks. This constant humiliation is too much for Bradley and he decides he will get revenge on Santa, kill him, then take all his presents. Home Alone style for a year he converts his parent’s house into a giant Santa trap. He booby traps the chimney with dynamite, puts guillotines in all the doors and windows, trains tigers to rip apart Santa, and builds trapdoors in the floor. Instead of stopping him or calling the police his parents just leave and Bradley’s left home alone waiting for his annual intruder. I’m not going to give away what happens next, but rest assured being a kids book it never goes into bloodshed.